Meizu's defeat, "Zhuhai Factory" behind him

The situation of being acquired by Geely was basically determined, and there were different sounds inside and outside Meizu. It is optimistic that "Cheng Ye is also defeated by Huang Zhang and Huang Zhang". After Geely, after the Meizu Holdings, a conversion person should bring some changes. It is believed that Ali has also brought money, but the result is unsatisfactory. The supply chain advantages in the automotive industry Geely, I am afraid that it can help the mobile phone business of Meizu.

Author 丨 Lin Xiazhang

Edit 丨 Lei Yanpeng

When Lu An remembered that he had just joined Meizu, the M8 had not yet been formed. During the interview, Bai Yongxiang, the director of the R & D department, said to him with interactive drawings, "To make a mobile phone that is cooler than Apple."

Later, Meizu M8 began a national test. Lu An demonstrated the M8 system to the agent and showed M8's anti -falling ability. Wherever you go, the agents are extremely enthusiastic. He deeply felt the charm of M8.

Lu An has worked in Meizu for more than ten years. In his impression, this was the initial and best look of Meizu mobile phones.

M8 is regarded as the first real domestic smartphone. Meizu is also regarded as "the Huangpu Military Academy of Domestic Smart Machines".

In 2015, Meizu finally broke the sales of 20 million units, but the carnival only maintained for three years. After that, Meizu's voice volume was getting smaller and smaller, and the news of being acquired from time to time from 2022.

The "most soul Android mobile phone manufacturer" eventually changed his name.

01. Meizu Yi Lord Geely, Huang Zhang changed to two shareholders

After half a year of the "rumor" of Geely ’s intended to acquire Meizu, it finally became an official announcement on June 3, 2002.

The announcement shows that the buyer of the transaction is Hubei Xingji Times Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as the "Xingji Times"). It was established in September 2021. The major shareholders are Geely Group and the actual controller is Li Shufu. Therefore, the acquisition was also described by the outside world as "Geely's acquisition of Meizu".

Before the transaction was completed, the founder of Meizu Huang Zhang held 49.08%of Meizu, and Taobao held 27.23%to control Meizu together.

After the transaction was completed, Huang Zhang's shareholding proportion of Meizu fell to 9.79%, and Taobao withdrew from Meizu's shareholders, and in the Xingji era, Meizu 79.09%was absolute controlling equity.

Some former employees once sighed, "To be disrespectful, Meizu can only change the boss if you want to change the status quo." Now the boss really changed.

Before the acquisition, Meizu mobile phones had already fallen to "Others" in the list of shipments. To say that there is something valuable in Meizu, it is undoubtedly Flyme.

In addition to the 17th and 18th series in the past two years, Meizu launched the Flyme For CAR vehicle system in 2021. At the same time, it is a customized car system for some car companies. It also earns some advertising money by the Flyme system.

According to the original rhythm, Meizu 19 series should be released in April this year, but insiders revealed that there are no projects at present.

As for the size of the personnel, former Meizu employees said that the company had more than 4,700 people during the peak period, and then continued to lay off layoffs. At first, the entire company was unified, but the external response was relatively large. Later, it was replaced by various departments every month. In 2021, industrial and commercial information shows that there are only 547 employees who pay social security employees.

Behind the narrowing team size is the morale of increasingly low.

For a long time in the past, Meizu's employees have basically did not conduct performance assessments, have not been motivated, and have not been a long -term leader to talk about strategic play. Many people who want to leave choose to follow the soldiers, waiting for the company to lay off the company to get the compensation of "N+1".

Lu An heard that Huang Zhang had a statement with the senior management, and he could no longer be able to bring everyone. "The rest can be tossing and tossing.

Geely naturally needs to make some changes.

Some people familiar with the matter revealed that many of the equity of Meizu was still in the previous mid -to -high -level hands. Next, the repurchase should be concentrated. After Geely's shares, the new managers need to re -subscribe to the equity, which is equivalent to a strong one with the interests of the company. Bind.

From the level of senior manager to the director, there will be about 3 million to 5 million shares in your hand. The price has not yet been determined. It will also leave the field.

In terms of valuation, in 2015, Meizu received an investment of 590 million US dollars in Ali, transferred to 29.34%of the equity, and the corresponding valuation was around 13 billion yuan. In 2016, Tianyin Holdings obtained the equity of Meizu 0.655%for 200 million yuan, and Meizu's corresponding valuation reached 30.5 billion yuan.

Lu'an told the city that from 2019 to 2021, in order to boost the morale of employees, Meizu once opened the equity trading system internally. At that time, Meizu had been on the downhill road for a long time. Yuan fell below 1 yuan, but it was still "priceless". It was not until later that it fell 3 cents per share.

More than a year ago, Meizu's equity trading system had been closed, and the transaction price before closing had been as low as 1 dime per share. Based on this, Meizu's valuation at that time was only one billion yuan.

But what kind of price Geely bought Meizu this time is still unknown.

02, short carnival, long downhill road

From the perspective of sales, Meizu's highlight period was between 2015 and 2017. At that time, Meizu's overall sales remained above 20 million units, which was a leap compared to about 4 million units in 2014. In fact, the ups and downs of Meizu can find traces from Huang Zhang's distinctive personality.

Huang Zhang, who has been rated as "top product manager" by many people, has a "paranoid" personality and retreats all year round, more like a craftsman in a deep mountain.

An old employee who had left Meizu revealed that Huang Zhang once scolded the company's testing department leaders and asked him why he didn't use it more, experience more, and even improved in user interaction. He even changed the name of the test department to the test experience department. Prior to this, the problem of user experience was generally completed by UI design engineers or product managers, but Huang Zhang asked all the members to participate in the improvement of the user experience.

Another time is on the eve of the system conference. When everyone has worked overtime late, Huang Zhang suddenly said that there was a problem after watching the final release version. He thought that a row of icons had a row of pixels. Others felt that the naked eye felt that the naked eyes were fundamentally fundamental. I couldn't see that the staff found out that there was something.

However, as Meizu moved from "small and beautiful" to greaterly, the other side of "paranoia" also showed.

In the Meizu Forum, Huang Zhang said with the vest of "J.Wong", saying a lot of remarks similar to "rolling".

In 2018, the "Meizu" logo on the outer wall of the Meizu Zhuhai Headquarters Building was replaced by the red seal -style "only fine" -this was the newly proposed by Meizu's new vice president of Meizu at the time of Meizu. slogan.

The "only essence and only one", which is taken from the ancient book "Shang Shu · Dayu Mo", has the meaning of "pure techniques", "excellent attitude" and "good intentions" in Yang Yan's interpretation. The Emperor Qianlong also carried out the "only one" seal on his private seal.

Internal employees revealed that the version they heard is that "only the only one" is the seal of the Emperor Qianlong, referred to as "the emperor's chapter", which is one of the reasons for Huang Zhang's view of this concept, but also let Huang Zhang later against Yang Yan. I feel trust.

Huang Zhang retired twice and returned twice. After returning in 2017, Huang Zhang said that he would "reintegrate the mountain to create my dream machine to welcome the 15th anniversary of Meizu". Later, the "Dream Machine" was named Meizu 15.

However, before Meizu 15 was really listed, Huang Zhang appeared in the official community of Meizu and said that "15 is only returning to Meizu small test cattle knife after many years, and then the 16 series is the product I made every effort." Meizu 15's statement.

Internal employees said, "I don't understand why the boss wants to smash his own products, and most colleagues have such confusion."

For the partners who left the team, Huang Zhang's posture is also not decent -there is the whereabouts of Lao Bai (Bai Yongxiang) in the forum, "Meeting and oil" (Meizu fans), Huang Zhang responded "you want him to buy his Pro7 at the original price. "; Some kerosene proposed to retain talents, Huang Zhang ridiculed Li Nan as" waste money ", saying that it was talent who could make money.

(Meizu PRO7 smartphone promotional map)

In addition to Huang Zhang's factors, Meizu has several key nodes on the downhill.

Some opinions believe that Meizu once abandoned Qualcomm's transfer and the use of MediaTek chips, resulting in a premium that cannot support the high -end series is an important reason for its gradually "abandonment" by the market.

However, as early as 2020, Li Nan publicly stated that the highest growth of Meizu was in the years when he insisted on not using Qualcomm. Meizu and MediaTek cooperated as VIP treatment, and in Qualcomm's rules were only "second -class citizens".

(Li Nan, former vice president of Meizu)

Before the release of the PRO 7 led by Bai Yongxiang in 2017, the internal expectations of this model were extremely high, and the large -scale advertisements were laid, and there were quite a lot of goods. Support this expectation, so "play off".

After that, the Meizu 16 series, that is, Meizu re -used a model back to the Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. Because of the lesson after the defeat of the PRO 7, a relatively conservative stocking was adopted, which caused the market to be in short supply. The highest time of new products, the final results were not ideal.

After experiencing these two blows, Mei Lan has also been cut off by Meizu, Meizu's voice volume has significantly reduced a lot, and the road that can go is getting narrower.

Former Meizu employees said that manufacturers such as Meizu need to pay first, and large quantities like Huami OV can talk about the gap between capital turnover.

Some good suppliers have even "not birds, because the volume is too small", especially some details that require high -quality suppliers to cooperate with debugging and improved, facing many resistance.

03. In the future, it is still full of unknown

The limited pattern of the founder, the company's wrong judgment on the market and its own strength, and the internal struggle, are constantly consuming Meizu's early accumulated product reputation and team morale. And all this also pushed Meizu on the downhill road.

Before the announcement, Meizu launched 0 advertisements 0 pre -installed "three zero mobile phones", but quickly returned to the old way to make money by advertising; It is believed that the mobile phone may be equipped with the Hongmeng system, but it is actually just a smart lighting product using the Hongmeng system, which is a "small clever" marketing method. It also sold Apple's custom accessories on the official website. Apple now relies on providing accessories for Apple users to survive. " Now that the situation of Geely's acquisition is basically determined, there are two sounds inside and outside Meizu.

It is optimistic that "Cheng Ye is also defeated by Huang Zhang and Huang Zhang". After Geely, after the Meizu Holdings, a conversion person should bring some changes.

It is believed that Ali has also brought money, but the result is unsatisfactory. The supply chain advantages in the automotive industry Geely, I am afraid that it can help the mobile phone business of Meizu.

People close to Geely mobile phone once told "Finance and Economics" that Geely fancy Meizu's Flyme OS design and development team and some intellectual property related to human -computer interaction communication, but according to Li Shufu's style, he will only make Geely's own brand Essence

(Li Shufu)

Regardless of the result, the change is already happening. People familiar with the matter revealed that Meizu, who has been laying off for many years, has begun to expand, hoping to find the previous employees from the grassroots level to expand their business, but the specific business direction and details have not been announced to the public.

Li Shufu's actual control of the Astrological Times told the city community that this transaction still needs to perform the approval procedures of relevant regulatory agencies. The details of the transaction are still in the negotiation. I believe that Meizu will take this strategic investment as an opportunity to create a better future.

When the acquisition is completed, the first thing that ushered in the "better future" should be a group of original Meizu management that can be found out, and Ali, which can finally get rid of Meizu, "burden".

In 2015, after Li Nan, one of Meizu's "Three Swordsmen", Li Nanlai came to Ali's $ 590 million investment. Although Meizu completed 20 million units on gambling agreements, the two parties were still unpleasant.

The reason is that at that time, Ali hoped to carry his Alibaba Cloud OS on more Meizu mobile phones to expand his ecology, but only a few low -end Meilan models used this system in Meizu. Accusal of "rejection of belief."

(Meizu mobile phone Charm Blue 3 releases 599 yuan for sale)

In the end, the Charm Blue series was cut off by Huang Zhang, and the cooperation between the two sides ended with no illness. Ali even demanded a withdrawal, and the two sides fell into an embarrassing situation. Geely's entry undoubtedly gave Ali a chance to completely solve it.

Talking about Meizu, many people will still describe it as "a good card, two two kings, two, and the two kings."

As far as Huang Zhang is concerned, Meizu's slump has been helpless. In May 2019, he said on the Meizu Forum: "If you can choose, I don't want to be a big shareholder, too tired."

Meizu's fate now seems to be destined.

(At the request of the interviewee, Lu An in the article is a pseudonym)

(Except for the sources alone, the above pictures are from Visual China)

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